Happy 4th of July

Welcome to Wild Card Wednesday: Holiday Edition.

Happy Independence Day to all my American friends! Last year, I wrote a blog post about the risk our founding fathers took in declaring and fighting for independence from Great Britain. If you missed that post and would like to read it, here’s the link.

Most of you probably are doing fun stuff like barbecuing, frying fish, or (safely) popping fireworks. For all of you who are out having fun, I wish you a safe and happy day.

For my non-American friends (and for those Americans like me who are stuck at home alone), I’ve got something to share that might make today a little less boring.

I just finished reading The Serial Killer’s Wife by Robert Swartwood, so I’m going to do a short review on it.

Read the summary: (from Amazon)

Five years ago Elizabeth Piccioni’s husband was arrested for being a serial killer. Her life suddenly turned upside down, she did what she thought was best for her newborn baby: she took her son and ran away to start a new life.

Now, living in a quiet part of the Midwest with a new identity, Elizabeth is ready to start over. But one day she receives a phone call from a person calling himself Cain. Cain somehow knows about her past life. He has abducted her son, and if Elizabeth wants to save him she must retrieve her husband’s trophies — the fingers he cut off each of his victims.

With a deadline of one hundred hours, Elizabeth has no choice but to return to the life she once fled, where she will soon realize that everything she thought she knew is a lie, and what’s more shocking than Cain’s identity is the truth about her husband.

The stated genre of the book is thriller. Thriller is a funny genre for me. I love the high stakes and fast pacing, but the commonly used themes of the genre don’t appeal to me.

The Serial Killer’s Wife was different. It is about one woman’s struggle to save her child’s life. The stakes, while very high, are personal. By that, I mean the outcome will only affect a few people.

This book was hard to put down. Once the trouble starts, the action moves pretty fast. It’s one disaster after another. Characters I liked got killed, and I didn’t know who was trustworthy. (In the end, I was wrong.)

Best I can tell, The Serial Killer’s Wife is independently published. Robert Swartwood has done a professional job. The novel is admirably well edited. The formatting seemed mistake free, and the book has a slick cover designed by Jeroen ten Berge.

In short, I am glad I bought this book and read it. I enjoyed Robert Swartwood’s writing style and plan to try more of his books in the future.